Chicago Observer

Delta Air Lines Chairman Leo F. Mullin flew to Chicago last week  on United Airlines. There's an explanation. The former First Chicago (now Bank One) Corp. executive arrived for a couple of speeches from another appearance in New York, a route Delta doesn't fly.

"United is a great airline," insists Mr. Mullin, who piled up enough frequent-flier miles on it as a banker to still be recognized and coddled. "I was treated very nicely."

At the Bankers Club of Chicago, he drew parallels between his old and new industries: deregulated, though still government-beholden businesses where pricing information is universally available and profit edges come only from cost-containment. United merger candidate US Airways Group Inc. is a prime example of a cost-burdened carrier, he said.

With Bank One President Verne G. Istock in the audience, Mr. Mullin quipped, "I came to Chicago to see who's on First." It did not bring down the house.

Rainmaking in forecast for Bill Daley  but where and when?

While deflecting talk that Mayer Brown & Platt had begun wooing William Daley to return to his old law firm after the Clinton administration winds down, Co-chairman Tyrone C. Fahner made an astute prediction a fortnight ago: The U.S. commerce secretary's first post-cabinet role would be in Vice-president Al Gore's presidential campaign. Last week, Mr. Daley was named to run it. "He knows the states that can be won and lost," said Mr. Fahner. Not that Mayer Brown doesn't want him back. Another partner, Roger J. Kiley Jr., who was briefly one of Mayor Richard M. Daley's chiefs of staff, acknowledged that he had dinner with William Daley on a recent business trip to Washington, D.C. But that, he added, is routine. "If they want to make a pitch to him, I would imagine they would do it in a smarter way than sending me out," he insisted. Mr. Fahner noted, "There's no doubt in Bill's mind we would like to have him back." Much hinges, of course, on whether Mr. Daley would be part of any Gore administration.

Back to the future for Reuben Hedlund

When attorney Peter John joined Hedlund & Hanley in 1994, the 3-year-old litigation firm projected "managed growth to 80 lawyers over the next three to five years." It never made it. Hedlund Hanley & John expired last week at 23 lawyers. Reuben Hedlund, 64, former chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, declined to comment, though he later issued a statement indicating that Mr. John, who'd gone through another law firm dissolution at Phelan Pope & John, would join the renamed Williams Montgomery & John. Meanwhile, Mr. Hedlund plans to reform Hedlund & Hanley in his 57th-floor Sears Tower office. Such commercial litigation boutiques are among the most secure places amid the legal industry's flux  unless a large client vanishes. Mr. Hedlund's have included Sears, Roebuck and Co., Tenneco Inc. and USG Corp.

Can't stem it; exec joins CBT flight

The Chicago Board of Trade's (CBT) associate general counsel who headed a staff-retention task force is headed out the door. Kathryn M. Trkla, 42, is leaving at the end of the month for law firm Foley & Lardner, where former CBT General Counsel Scott Early toils. An 11-year veteran, she credited the decision to "some really good opportunities," but other sources said she was affected by low staff morale that is contributing to an exodus. Another antsy executive is Chief Information Officer James P. Amaral, whose role has been eclipsed by the recent hiring of Mary McDonnell, former chief financial officer of defunct Griffin Trading Co., to manage the CBT's pivotal alliance with an electronic exchange in Europe.

Gray paints U of C change as more than black-and-white issue

Former University of Chicago President Hanna H. Gray reminded new graduates that the university is like a church that welcomes all denominations  "especially fives and 10s and 20s, preferably with zeros attached." With alums upset over proposed curriculum changes and rethinking financial support, it was something more than a throwaway line in a crisp commencement address, her first public comment on the upheaval wrought by her successor, the soon-to-retire Hugo F. Sonnenschein. As he listened, she diplomatically hewed to the middle of the road: "Your ability to distinguish between change for the sake of other ends and change for the sake of extending and enhancing the university's goals and special strengths with reasoned vigor will help protect you from the twin diseases of an evasive nostalgia and a derisive indifference. Of course . . . if people are no longer asking, 'Just what exactly do you mean?' and 'Where is your evidence?' every time anyone opens her mouth, then something is definitely and radically wrong."